Deeplinks Blog posts about Transparency

A group of investors in AT&T have had it with the phone company’s collaboration with law enforcement through the Hemisphere program, in which the company facilitates police access to trillions of phone records. At the spring shareholder conference, Zevin Asset Management plans to force discussion of contradictions between AT&T’s stated commitment to privacy and civil liberties and the Hemisphere program. One of the chief goals is to demand greater transparency over the highly secretive program.

Thanks to our clients and friends at CREDO Mobile and the Internet Archive, EFF was able to shine a rare light on national security letters (NSLs) this week. The FBI uses NSLs to force Internet providers and telecommunications companies to turn over the names, addresses, and other records about their customers. NSLs almost always come with a secrecy provision that bars the companies—in violation of the Constitution—from publicly disclosing the requests. Worse still, NSL gags generally last forever and are imposed by the FBI without any mandatory court oversight.

There are fewer than 60 days until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in, but President Barack Obama can still take steps to improve transparency—and therefore government accountability.

In a letter to the Obama administration this week, EFF and other civil liberties groups—including Demand Progress and OpenTheGovernment.org—are asking that he shed some much-needed light on government actions that impact civil liberties ahead of his departure.

“As your administration winds down and our democracy faces strong headwinds, we urge you to take the following important steps to empower citizens, Congress, and the courts to protect our system of separated powers and make sure that our government continues working as the founders intended,” the letter says.

Observers around the world are scrutinizing the President-elect’s transition team and prospects for digital rights under the incoming administration. Trump’s campaign statements offered few reasons to be optimistic about the next administration’s commitments, making the unrestrained domestic secret surveillance regime that President Trump will inherit an even greater threat not only to privacy, but also dissent, individual autonomy and freedom of conscience, and—ultimately—our democracy.

At EFF, we have committed ourselves to redoubling our efforts to defend digital rights. We know, however, that it will take the concerted actions of our supporters to help our goals find their reflection in law, policy, technology, and culture.

EFF works to inform the world about breaking issues in the world of technology policy and civil liberties. And one of our best ways of communicating with our friends and members is through our nearly-weekly newsletter, EFFector. Last week, we sent out a very special EFFector: a deep dive, single-issue edition that got into the nitty-gritty of open access and research. To keep the conversation going, we are publishing it here on the Deeplinks blog as well.

Did you miss it? Don't worry—you can sign up for EFFector here so you're never out of the loop again.